CONFIRMED - Matchroom leaves Sky Sports for DAZN

Yes. Needs to be approved by the government though as it's anti-competitive. The right palms have probably already been greased in that respect though.

We're in for another few years of horribly overpriced sports yet.

 

I have 0 interest in premier league footie, so if they got the rights it means my boxing cost would probably quadruple which would be crap.

I just dont see DAZN working without a big footie contract.

 

Champions League pool

 

Wouldn't be so sure mate. If hundreds of thousands of people are willing to pay £20 a pop to see Dillian Whyte fight at nowhere near world level, then there's got to be a sweet spot where a boxing subscription can stand on its own two feet. Or even combined with other sports less popular than footy. Boxing, darts and snooker might not be the worst idea.

This stuff has got to happen one day. Might take them a while to get it right mind.

 

Is that aided though by the Sky Sports machine, hardly going to have boxers popping up on A League of Their Own to promote their upcoming fight.

 

This just shows just how much things have changed with the Premier League.

The Premier League was always about putting rights to tender as the demand was there.

The last deal was worse than the previous one and they must he worried going to tender will see a worse deal again. That TV rights bubble looks like it has finally burst.

Also confirms what I thought and posted last week that Amazon have no desire to go big on football rights.

 

Problem is darts is tied up with Sky and I'm not sure Darts will leave Sky. Its a big ratings winner for Sky as well filling up so many dates in the calander so I think they will really fight to keep hold of Darts.

DAZN would have to pay a lot to get darts. Sponsors put up a lot money for darts TV tournaments as those tournaments have plenty of eyeballs on them. Those sponsors ensure players earning potential continues to grow and a change to DAZN would may not see the same kind of sponsorships due to the lower audience.

I think the PDC would really need to think about whether darts could potentially decrease in popularly if it was on a streaming service like DAZN. The audience that watch it on TV and live at venues is very much a casual audience and not sure they will gravitate to another pay TV service to watch darts.

 

Various papers tomorrow reporting that BT are looking to offload BT Sport to an American company, Amazon, Disney or DAZN.

If somehow DAZN acquires BT Sport and rebrands their channels to their own they would have a very strong rights portfolio plus Matchroom boxing.

 

Would they chop Frank or keep him and maybe make fights easier between promoters being under the same banner?

 

Of course it is - a large part of the promotion is Sky-manufactured hype. But I'd like to think it's also based on the simple fact that people like boxing. Unfortunately the sport has become more niche over the years, but I'm hoping if it becomes more accessible over a Netflix-style model people will become more invested (like they did with Eubank / Bruno / Mcguigan etc). It's certainly what DAZN are banking on.

 

It won't happen overnight, but in my mind it's got to happen eventually. It's over £40 a month on an 18 month contract to get Sky Sports. How much can darts see of that £40 that needs to cover football and the rest of the package). Even £3 a month straight to the darts would surely see them get more money. And who wouldn't be willing to pay that with no contract. I'd pay it for one night if a few mates wanted to watch it.

The struggle for Sky is that we live in an age where people are increasingly able to get what they want instantly. The only reason it doesn't happen in sports is the amount of different people and organisations coining it in. It's got to split eventually. Sky have already scrapped Sky Sports 1,2,3 etc in favour of channels dedicated to certain sports. They know this is the fight. The next step is to split the sports from the main Sky package, and the step after that is to split the individual sports.

 

Without doubt Sky Sports is way over priced particularly for me who is only interested in Boxing other family members who watch football might kick off when in the near future I cancel the subscription. The problem we have seen with a dedicated boxing site I.e. Boxnation is providing enough quality content . Ideally a boxing only site would require the total offering of ESPN , PBC , SKY ,DAZN, BT and Boxnation and I cannot imagine that happening anytime soon.

 

I'm fairly confident there will be some good matchroom cards on DAZN, especially early on as they build the platform and try to entice subscribers. The problem I foresee is that the standard will drop eventually as Hearn gets greedy, which is what happened with Sky.

 

Hopefully DAZN will stop him putting on triple women's world championship cards in the way that Smith couldn't, or didn't want to.